Does Science Need

Religion?
Roger Trigg
The Power of Reason
The idea that science is anything but self-sufficient, and the
supreme exemplar of human reason, would seem extraordinary
to many at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Surely sci-
ence is itself the source of knowledge, and the determinant of
what is rationally acceptable. The possibility that it stands in
need of further justification, let alone of a religious kind, would
be dismissed out of hand. For this reason, science has often
seemed secure and self-confident, and religious faith has
appeared to retreat as scientific knowledge has grown.
Sometimes religious believers have put their faith in the current
inability of science to explain something. This is, however a
risky strategy. Just because we do not know what causes some-
thing does not mean we have to turn to God as the evident
cause. The problem may be the result of temporary ignorance
on our part. With greater scientific progress, the gap in our
knowledge can be filled, and one more reason for faith is
removed. The so-called God of the gaps is a very insecure
God, the necessity for whom can be quickly removed.
The continuous retreat of faith was memorably pictured in
Matthew Arnolds famous poem Dover Beach in the middle
of the nineteenth century (in what we now regard as a religious
age). Watching the ebb of the tide, he referred to the sea of
faith and its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar. The phrase
is much quoted and still carries a resonance. It is easy to think
that science is one of the major factors bringing about a fall in
religious belief that is as remorseless and predictable as the
retreat of the sea after high tide. Indeed the sociological idea of
secularisation carries with it much the same set of implications.
The view is that there is a law-like progression away from faith
to ways of looking at the world that have no need of religion.
There is, it appears, an inevitability about the process which
means that all religion is doomed to retreat to the point of
extinction. Needless to say, even if that may appear to be an
accurate comment on the current state of Western Europe, it
does not reflect social reality in other parts of the world, even
in places, such as the United States, where modern science is
influential.
Can science allow for divine action, or the working out of
any divine intention? It is often thought that it can be under-
stood in its own terms, and need not be seen as dependent on
anything beyond itself. Science is thus the purest expression of
human reason, and its function is to drive back the forces of
superstition and blind faith. This is the legacy of the eighteenth
century Enlightenment, which tended to see the world as a self-
contained material mechanism, and human reason as the key
with which to understand its workings. Any reference to God
was at best redundant, and at worst a descent into irrationality.
The Enlightenment at that time tended to take the power of
human rationality for granted. Yet neither the possibility of rea-
son and truth, nor order and regularity in the world investigat-
ed by science, should be easily assumed. Rationality has too
often been seen as an ultimate fact and at times almost deified,
as when after the French Revolution, churches were converted
into Temples of Reason. Indeed rationalism and materialism
appeared to go together, so that rationalism can often seem to
be a synonym for atheism.
Although, however, the world was seen in mechanistic
terms, human beings were apparently able to stand outside the
mechanism to understand it. After all, if reason were itself the
product of a causal mechanism, like a sophisticated piece of
clockwork, there is no guarantee that what we are led to believe
is necessarily true. We simply believe what we are induced to
believe, whether there are good reasons for the belief or not. To
take the example of evolution, we may, according to the theory
of natural selection, have evolved so as to hold certain beliefs
Summary
Must science constitute a closed system, assuming all reality is within its grasp? So far from
science being autonomous, and its method defining rationality, it itself rests on major assump-
tions. We may take for granted the regularity and ordered nature of the physical world, and the
ability of the human mind to grasp it. Yet theism can explain this by invoking the rationality
of the Creator.
About the Author
Prof. Roger Trigg is Professor of Philosophy at
Warwick University, Founding Chairman of
the British Philosophical Association and
Founding President of the British Society for
the Philosophy of Religion, now a Vice-
President. Prof. Trigg has published widely on
the relationship between science, religion and
philosophy, including Rationality and Science:
Can Science Explain Everything? (Blackwell,
1993) and Rationality and Religion, Does
Faith Need Reason? (Blackwell, 1998).
FARADAY PAPER NO 2
naturally. Some beliefs would be beneficial, and help us to sur-
vive and have more descendants. Some argue that religious
beliefs themselves could be in this category. The point, howev-
er, of such argument is often to explain rationally why some
types of beliefs are widespread, despite being false, and this
explanation demands trust in the independent power of human
reason.
The belief in a universal rationality was typical of what has
come to be called modernity, but, in recent years, so-called
post-modernism has challenged it. How can we be sure that we
all share the same ability to reason, and can together arrive at a
truth that holds for everyone? Post-modernism denies this and
stresses instead the differences between traditions and epochs.
What is regarded as obviously true at one time and place may be
very different from the assumptions brought to bear at another
time. There is then no overarching rationality, no common core
of reasoning which all humans can share, no objective truth
holding from generation to generation. Such assertions (which
themselves have the ring of claims to objective truth) would
undermine the whole rationale underlying science. It could no
longer be seen as a systematic application of human reason, but
just the result of the prejudices of a particular tradition. Thus we
can talk of Western science, or modern science, the discover-
ies of which are not discoveries at all, but the mere outworking
of historically conditioned assumptions.
Some have welcomed the way post-modernism deflates the
pretensions of science, because, they think, space is thereby
made for the functioning of religion. If science cannot claim
truth, it cannot rule out religion on the grounds that it is false.
This, though, comes at a high price. Not only is science ren-
dered impotent, but no religious belief can claim truth either. If
there is no reason for doing science, there is also no reason for
being religiously committed. Reason has been destroyed. The
only consequence can be that science and religion are each seen
as different bodies of belief, put in self-contained compart-
ments. Neither can attack, or support, the other, or say anything
of relevance to the other. They have to leave each other alone.
This stand-off between bodies of belief, which can be at odds
with each other, may be welcomed in some quarters. Many sci-
entists are willing to accept half the story, namely that religion
and science have nothing to do with each other. They are more
reluctant to go along with the post-modern idea that science is
not the product of reason, and cannot claim truth. It is a cher-
ished assumption of science that its claims, if true, are true
everywhere and at all times. They apply equally in Washington
and Beijing. They concern physical laws which apply equally
now and here, and also at the edge of the universe and the begin-
ning of time.
Separating science and religion
The evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, adopted the idea
of what he termed non-overlapping magisteria
1
. He meant that
religion and science each had their areas of concern but were
different and had nothing to say to one another. In other words,
religious language is not in the business of describing facts in
the way that science does. Science says what happens, whereas
religion is left to answer the question why. Science and religion
are not in the same sphere of discourse. They cannot argue with
each other because they have different functions.
This picture of the absolute separation of science and religion
has its attractions for those who want to stop religion from hav-
ing anything to say to science, while respecting its freedom to
operate in its own sphere. In that way, science is freed from
authoritarian claims derived from any ecclesiastical hierarchy or
from interpretations of the Bible. Scientific reason is kept free
of all theological considerations, and spared the need of messy
confrontations with religious belief. Science and religion can go
their own way. This fits in with current attempts not just to keep
church and state separate, but also to make religion a personal
and private affair, as distinct from the public role of science.
Keeping science and religion apart so that they do not fight
each other is only half the story. On the post-modernist under-
standing neither can claim superiority, but that is not how many
scientists see it. They think that science can still claim truth in
an objective sense, showing what is true for everyone at all
times. It is still the expression of human rationality. As a result,
religion, even if insulated from accusations of outright falsity,
has to be understood as operating in an area where the kind of
literal truth claimed by science does not hold. It talks of val-
ues, as distinct from facts. It may be concerned with the
meaning and purpose we give to our own lives, but cannot be
understood as setting itself up in rivalry to science. Truth is what
science tells us. Religion deals with personal issues. In other
words, science is objective, and religion subjective. Science is
the product of reason, religion of some mysterious faculty called
faith. Science tells us about the world. Religion allows us each
to work out for ourselves what is important for each of us.
Science can hold its place in the public world. Religion is a pri-
vate affair.
If science is the arbiter of truth, and cannot deal with non-
physical events, that rules out by definition any possibility of
supernatural, divine, intervention within the physical world (in
a way, incidentally, that rules out basic claims of Christian doc-
trine about the Incarnation and Resurrection). Thus the refusal
of science to cooperate with religion leads inevitably to the view
that religion adds nothing to our understanding of the workings
of the world being investigated by science. What is accepted as
knowledge has to be subjected to public standards of testing,
through observation, measurement and experiment. Science is
made the arbiter of acceptable knowledge, and its methods
define truth. Anything outside the reach of science is viewed as
unprovable.
This is only a hairs breadth away from the positivist view
that what cannot be scientifically tested, and verified, is mean-
ingless. As A.J. Ayer said in his classic Language, Truth and
Logic
2
all propositions which have factual content are empiri-
cal hypotheses. He expanded on this by saying that every
empirical hypothesis must be relevant to some actual, or possi-
ble, experience. Metaphysical statements, outstripping experi-
ence, are strictly meaningless, and have no content. Such logi-
cal positivism has long since been given up, partly because it
cannot even deal with theoretical entities in physics.
Nevertheless its influence lives on, and nowhere more than
2
2. Ayer, A. J. Language Truth and Logic, London: Gollancz, (2nd edn.1946), p.41 1. Gould, S.J. Rocks of Ages, New York: Ballantine (1999), p.88.
A refusal to posit non-natural entities may be a way of
making progress in science, but that does not mean that
such entities cannot exist
when a simple-minded distinction is drawn between scientific
facts, and some shadowy subjective world of personal reactions
to them. Science deals with what is factual, and religion has to
be excluded. The two cannot impinge on each other, and the
unspoken assumption is that scientific claims are rationally
based, and religion is in the realm of the irrational.
Science is by definition an empirical discipline, and its
method is the empirical method par excellence. It would never
have made progress if it had been assumed too easily that if an
empirical explanation was not immediately to hand, one should
appeal to magic, or the supernatural. Anyone can attribute odd
events to the fairies or goblins at the bottom of the garden.
Modern science has rigorously focused on the physical world,
and expects to find physical explanations. Yet this can mean that
it can view the world as a closed and self-contained physical
system. Since the advent of quantum mechanics, it has been
recognised that this is a simplification, and there are ontological
gaps at the microscopic level. It is, though, easily assumed that
uncaused events must always be random, and are not explicable
in terms of any external agency.
Scientific method has produced results. Our knowledge of
the physical world, and its processes, has accumulated. It seems
obvious that any appeal to supernatural agency is unscientific.
Yet what should we conclude from that? Many assume that it
means that talking of God is irrational, since all reason is with-
in the province of science. Yet it could equally merely demon-
strate the intrinsic limitations of science in confronting aspects
of reality which transcend the ordinary physical world.
A refusal to posit non-natural entities may be a way of mak-
ing progress in science, but that does not mean that such entities
cannot exist, or that, for example there may not on occasion be
divine intervention. No scientist should resort to appeals to gob-
lins, but that does not entail that the physical world has to be
only explicable in its own terms, without the logical possibility
of some external agency. Once we think that science can explain
everything, anything beyond its compass must be as unreal as
goblins. Science cannot deal with non-physical events and enti-
ties. Indeed it is a paradox that science is the product of the
human mind, but can only deal with the idea of a mind by reduc-
ing it to its physical origins. This shows the possible limits of
science as a way of acquiring knowledge, and does not foreclose
the issue of what can be real. It is crucial to keep apart the ques-
tions of epistemology, how we gather knowledge, from those of
metaphysics, or what there is that might be known. We must
never assume, without much further argument, that what cannot
be explained by science for that reason alone cannot exist.
Does science need God?
Science cannot escape philosophical assumptions about the
framework in which its own activity takes place. For one thing,
it has to assume that there is a real world with a particular char-
acter, and that science is not an elaborate system of fiction. Yet
the idea that science has to be insulated from other branches of
putative knowledge only makes sense if one has already made
the judgment that science is the only source of knowledge,
because no reality lies beyond its reach. In English, the Latin
word for knowledge, scientia, has been narrowed to mean only
empirical knowledge, and this perhaps reflects a pervasive
assumption.
Many just take it for granted that science works, and do not
bother to think what has to be assumed for this to be possible.
Yet what warrants our presupposing that observation and exper-
iment, and the whole panoply of empirical knowledge, is prop-
erly based? The fact that observations here, or experiments
there, can be generalised so as to have a universal application
should be surprising. Science, however, can only proceed on the
assumption that every piece of nature is representative of other
parts, even in other places in the universe. The so-called uni-
formity of nature cannot be discovered by science, since only a
small part of the physical world will ever be accessible. Yet we
assume that physical laws are wide-ranging, and can help us
predict what has not yet occurred. By induction, we always
think we can go from what we have experienced to what we
have not, from the known to the unknown.
Science, in the modern era, did not appear in a vacuum. Why
did the modern stress on experimental reasoning replace the pre-
vious penchant for more speculative reasoning? Instead of
working out, perhaps through geometry, how the world had to
be, scientists realised they had to investigate how it actually is;
there was a growing recognition of the contingency of the phys-
ical world. God, it was thought, did not have to create the world
in any particular way. Robert Boyle, for instance, believed that
the laws of nature were totally dependent on the will of God,
who was not constrained by anything beyond himself. It fol-
lowed that human reason had to be used to see how in fact the
world had been created. Yet why should our rationality be able
to grasp that? There might seem little grounds for assuming that
our puny rationality would be equipped for such a task. It would
be by no means certain that the world behaved in an orderly
manner that could even in principle be understood.
For science to be possible, the world must be ordered so as to
behave in regular and intelligible ways, and it must also be
understood, in particular, by the human mind. Neither can be
taken for granted. In the seventeenth century, at the time of
Newton and Boyle, it was thought that the underlying patterns
and order present in the physical world were there because they
had been created by a rational, divine mind. Indeed God was
seen as the source and ground of all reason. Because the world
was created by a divine mind, there is an underlying order pres-
ent, so that, through Gods will it behaves in a normally pre-
dictable and regular manner. Indeed the reference to the logos,
at the beginning of St Johns Gospel, identifying logos and God,
refers to much more than anything to do with words and speech.
Logos in Greek philosophy itself refers to rationality, and the
underlying intelligibility inherent in everything. Hence we can
talk of biology, the logos about life, and even theology, the logos
about God. The reason inherent in things, reflecting the ration-
ality of the Creator, also makes rational reflection and discovery
possible. We can reason scientifically because there is a ration-
al structure inherent in the world. It is further possible for
humans, it was thought, because we were made in the image of
God, and in some small way share in His rationality.
The beginnings of modern science stemmed from the belief
that there is a rationality intrinsic in the physical universe,
because of its creation by the fount of all reason. If Reason per-
meates the universe, and we are endowed with a share in that
reason, we can expect to understand, at least in some small way,
the way the universe works. The theistic background answered
3
'For science to be possible, the world must be ordered so
as to behave in regular and intelligible ways'.
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4
the two important questions. Why can we assume the regularity
of physical processes, whether or not they are wholly deter-
mined, and how can our minds be attuned to understand them?
The slogan of the school of philosophers and theologians known
as the Cambridge Platonists
3
, who were influential at the time of
the founding of the Royal Society after the Restoration of the
monarchy, was that reason is the candle of the Lord. There was
no question of humans getting above themselves because of this
and considering themselves the masters of Creation. Our reason
is, like a candle, pale and flickering, compared with the light of
Gods wisdom. Nevertheless, it was sufficient to enable us gain
some knowledge. There was plenty of room for error, and par-
tial knowledge, but we were, it was thought, made in the image
of God, and could obtain a glimmer of understanding through
science, and other operations of the human mind. Yet, according
to this view of reason as rooted in God, human rationality was
not unaided. It was, in a general sense, as much revelatory of
Gods purposes as the more specific revelation taught by
Christianity. The Platonism of the Cambridge Platonists
4
was
well able to cope with a contrast between an uncertain and
wavering knowledge here and now, and perfect knowledge in
another realm. That higher reality is, however, reflected in our
physical world, so that this world, with its structure and order,
depends for its meaning on a higher form of existence.
Unlike the thinkers of the next century, those who paved the
way for modern science both respected reason, and believed that
its importance lay in its connection with the mind of the Creator.
Rationality may not be able to answer every question, but we
can rely on it as far it goes, because it is a God-given faculty.
This certainly contradicts any post-modern denial of the power
of reason. It also goes against the view of the later
Enlightenment that reason must be tied to empirical experience
in a way that rules out the supernatural. So far from an equation
of materialism and rationalism, rationality itself needed a super-
natural context, according to the founders of modern science.
Their belief in God gave them confidence that the physical
world in all its complexity and vast extent, could be understood.
Science does not just summarise our past experience, but aims
to show what we are likely to experience. It is in the business of
prediction as well as description.
As a matter of historical fact, modern science has developed
from an understanding of the world as Gods ordered Creation,
with its own inherent rationality. The issue is whether it can con-
tinue with confidence when it has jettisoned all theological
assumptions. Why does the world behave so regularly that sci-
ence can generalise and make universal claims about the nature
of physical reality? Why should it have such an inherent ration-
ality that our minds can make sense of it? Why should even the
highly abstract symbols of mathematics, the creation of human
minds, appear to be able to express its working? Without an
appeal to God, as the source and ground of reason, who has
made the world in a rational manner, there appears little
prospect for providing any external legitimation for science. Yet
if it has to be accepted on its own terms or not at all, many will
reject it outright. It will come to appear to be nothing more than
the cultural prejudices of a particular society at a
particular time.
This not only restricts our idea of rationality to what is acces-
sible to scientific methodology; it also removes any confidence
that our reason is equipped to unlock the mysteries of the phys-
ical world. Keeping science and religion in separate compart-
ments denies that they are dealing with the same world, and
probably implies that religion is not describing reality at all. It
does not, it is assumed, have the truth-claiming powers of sci-
ence.
Unless we take science at its own (sometimes over-confi-
dent) valuation, and do not indulge in any philosophical con-
cerns about its rational basis, we must take seriously the fact
that the belief in God, as Creator, has in the past provided a firm
basis for scientific understanding. A desire to understand the
works of the Creator has been a prime motivation for science.
Science needed theism in the seventeenth century at the time of
Newton and Boyle. The eighteenth century saw a growing belief
that science can survive on its own. Contemporary attacks on
the idea of modern rationality suggest that without a legitimate
base science will not go on flourishing
5
.
5. For further discussion of the impact of materialism see Trigg, R Philosophy Matters,
Oxford: Blackwell Publishing (2002), and for a discussion of the place of religion in
public life, particularly in the face of the influence of science, see Trigg, R. Religion in
Public Life: Must Faith be Privatized? Oxford: Oxford University Press (2007).
3. See Taliaferro, C. & Teply, A.J. (eds.) Cambridge Platonist Spirituality, (Classics of
Western Spirituality), New York: Paulist Press (2004).
4. Taliaferro & Teply, op. cit., (3) ibid
'As a matter of historical fact, modern science has devel-
oped from an understanding of the world as Gods
ordered Creation, with its own inherent rationality'.